Scientists have discovered a new subspecies of primate with a distinctively long tail deep in the Amazon forest of Brazil.

The monkey was named Mura's saddleback tamarin (saguinus fuscicollis mura) after a native tribe that inhabits the place where the animal was found during an expedition into the Amazonas state in northwestern Brazil in 2007, the scientists said Tuesday. The Mura Indians live in the Purus and Madeira river basins

The new species is related to the saddleback tamarins, which are named so because of their marked backs. It gray and dark brown in color, has a mottled "saddle," weighs less than a pound, stands nine inches tall and has a foot-long tail.

"This newly described monkey shows that even today there are still major wildlife discoveries to be made," Fabio Röhe of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of the discoverers, said, according to Live Science.

Rohe said the monkey's habitat is threatened with destruction by several development projects, including a major highway cutting through the Amazon forest.